How to Retarget Content to Facebook Custom Audiences

Have you considered using Facebook to reach your existing customers or those who visit your website?

Have you tried Facebook’s custom audience options?

Retargeting to the right audience is a must if you want to see more conversions from your Facebook ads.

In this article you’ll discover four Facebook custom audiences you can create to retarget your content to the most relevant Facebook audience.

Retarget content to a your audience with Facebook Custom Audiences.

Why Retargeted Content?

The goal of retargeted content (also known as remarketing) is to place your brand top of mind. Common strategies remarket to people who have already visited your website.

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People rarely buy from you the first time they visit your site or see an offer. They would rather take their time, compare your pricing with competitors’ and visit your site a few more times before completing that valuable sale.

Here are four custom audiences you can use to retarget Facebook users with your content.

#1: Website Visitors

The most common remarketing tactic is targeting relevant ads at people who have already visited your website (usually a specific landing page).

3. Next to the Visited field, customize the URL elements to match the pages you want to retarget.

4. Click on Create.

You don’t have to retarget everyone who visits your website.

After you create your personalized custom audience, it’s ready to use. However, keep in mind that it may take a few hours for the new audience to have the final user count.

#2: Facebook Fans

Retargeting to existing Facebook fans is incredibly easy: When you set up your Facebook ad, choose to target people who are already fans of your page.

Narrow your retargeting audience to include only people who are fans of your page.

Does it seem odd to advertise to existing Facebook fans? Consider that acquiring sales from existing customers is cheaper than acquiring new leads (and many of your fans are probably customers). You can also upsell those existing customers with new or better products and services.

#3: Email Subscribers

You can actually strengthen the power of your newsletter by serving Facebook ads to existing email subscribers.

To set up this custom audience, you need an Excel file with a column that includes all of your subscriber email addresses. Once you have that, go to Audiences in your Facebook Ads Manager, click Create Audience and choose Custom Audience.

Click on Data File Custom Audience and follow the instructions for the setup. Make sure to indicate that you’re updating email addresses.

Create a custom audience based on your email subscriber list.

Retargeting to email subscribers can increase the chance of conversion exponentially. It’s worth the extra effort to set it all up.

#4: Similar Audiences

Many of your users—whether website visitors, Facebook fans or list subscribers—have overlapping demographics, interests and behaviors. Wouldn’t it be great to find more people like them? Well, you can.

You can create a custom audience targeting people who share similar characteristics to your existing connections—people who are very likely to be interested in your products, services and content.

The custom audiences you create to retarget to by similarity are called lookalike audiences and they expose your ads to a more vast and relevant audience.

To create a custom audience based on similarities to website visitors, go to the Audience section of your Ads Manager and choose the custom audience installed on your website (see #1). Click Create Lookalike Audience at the bottom of the page and choose the desired audience reach.

To create a custom audience based on similarity to your current email subscribers, go to your Audience menu, click on the name of the email list you loaded in #3 and click on Create Lookalike Audience at the bottom of the page.

Once you have your custom lookalike audiences in place, you can select each as needed depending on the goal of your Facebook ads.

Wrapping Up

Retargeting via Facebook ads helps you stay top of mind while they’re considering their decision.

The trick is to retarget content to a precise audience rather than a generalized audience that may or may not be interested in learning more about your business, product or service.

This is a clever idea. I never thought about this and I can see that your share numbers are pretty high in itself! Now I need to add this strategy since I’ve been digging deep with my target audience! Thanks for sharing!

Bala

hi Rocco, in terms of targeting website visitors, these visitors have to be Fans on your Facebook page too right ?

jeff

Thanks for the insight.

Janice M.

Hey Rocco,

Great article. I have a question. How does Facebook create a “look a like” audience based upon an Excel document of your current email subscribers? What information are they pulling?

Sharon

Hi Rocco,

Thanks for the great article. I’ve previously installed the tracking pixel on our website but when I want to use the custom audience, Facebook tells me my audience is too narrow. I generally have about 1000 unique visitors per month. Am I doing something incorrectly or is this tool only applicable for bigger businesses?

Rocco Alberto Baldassarre

Hi Sherman,

Thank you for the note. Retargeting definitively is the way to boost sales and become top of mind

Best, Rocco

Rocco Alberto Baldassarre

You are welcome Jeff!

Rocco Alberto Baldassarre

Hi Bala,

No, it is not necessary to have them as fans.

Best, Rocco

Rocco Alberto Baldassarre

Hi Janice,

There is no official procedure, but i believe they analyze factors such as sex, gender, interests, likes and other parts of their profiles. It works very well!

Best, Rocco

Rocco Alberto Baldassarre

Hi Sharon,

There must be something wrong with the pixel. You only need 100 visitors to activate it. Did you install it site-wide and in the header?

Best, Rocco

http://www.volpes.co.za Volpes Linen

HI there, I am rather new to this so please bare with me. Under the Audience section, there is no option to create a custom audience? Any suggestions?

Thank you Rocco. What a great article do ou have to have a fan page to do the targeting. I am new at this. I just whys that I have more knowledge. But you are so clear on what you want us to learn. Thanks again.

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